Emma eBook

“Yes; Jane says she is sure they will; but yet,
this is such a situation as she cannot feel herself
justified in declining. I was so astonished when
she first told me what she had been saying to Mrs.
Elton, and when Mrs. Elton at the same moment came
congratulating me upon it! It was before tea—­stay—­no,
it could not be before tea, because we were just going
to cards—­and yet it was before tea, because
I remember thinking—­Oh! no, now I recollect,
now I have it; something happened before tea, but
not that. Mr. Elton was called out of the room
before tea, old John Abdy’s son wanted to speak
with him. Poor old John, I have a great regard
for him; he was clerk to my poor father twenty-seven
years; and now, poor old man, he is bed-ridden, and
very poorly with the rheumatic gout in his joints—­
I must go and see him to-day; and so will Jane, I am
sure, if she gets out at all. And poor John’s
son came to talk to Mr. Elton about relief from the
parish; he is very well to do himself, you know, being
head man at the Crown, ostler, and every thing of
that sort, but still he cannot keep his father without
some help; and so, when Mr. Elton came back, he told
us what John ostler had been telling him, and then
it came out about the chaise having been sent to Randalls
to take Mr. Frank Churchill to Richmond. That
was what happened before tea. It was after tea
that Jane spoke to Mrs. Elton.”

Miss Bates would hardly give Emma time to say how
perfectly new this circumstance was to her; but as
without supposing it possible that she could be ignorant
of any of the particulars of Mr. Frank Churchill’s
going, she proceeded to give them all, it was of no
consequence.

What Mr. Elton had learned from the ostler on the
subject, being the accumulation of the ostler’s
own knowledge, and the knowledge of the servants at
Randalls, was, that a messenger had come over from
Richmond soon after the return of the party from Box
Hill—­ which messenger, however, had been
no more than was expected; and that Mr. Churchill
had sent his nephew a few lines, containing, upon
the whole, a tolerable account of Mrs. Churchill, and
only wishing him not to delay coming back beyond the
next morning early; but that Mr. Frank Churchill having
resolved to go home directly, without waiting at all,
and his horse seeming to have got a cold, Tom had
been sent off immediately for the Crown chaise, and
the ostler had stood out and seen it pass by, the
boy going a good pace, and driving very steady.

There was nothing in all this either to astonish or
interest, and it caught Emma’s attention only
as it united with the subject which already engaged
her mind. The contrast between Mrs. Churchill’s
importance in the world, and Jane Fairfax’s,
struck her; one was every thing, the other nothing—­and
she sat musing on the difference of woman’s
destiny, and quite unconscious on what her eyes were
fixed, till roused by Miss Bates’s saying,